Timber is a renewable natural resource useful in the construction of buildings and other structures. When trees are harvested there is significant wastage of woody material. Typically this material is used in relatively low value applications such as fuel for heat generation, wood chips, landscaping products, the production of bio fuels and the like. While these are effective uses of waste products they do not add value to the product, and merely minimise economic loss on the cost of timber production.
Timber products act to sequester carbon dioxide for decades, thereby assisting in limiting climate change. This is a practical advantage and a point of difference in marketing the sustainable forestry industry, and the products produced from timber. However, these advantages are diminished or lost where woody waste material is combusted or otherwise transformed to release carbon dioxide. Many current uses for wood waste release significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thereby exacerbating climate change and undermining the carbon sequestration advantages of timber products.
As one example, so-called “peeler cores” (which are typically 60 to 80 mm diameter) result from logging for plywood products. Peeler cores are often used to fuel forest kilns, or chipped for use in landscape applications. Wood of diameter less than 80 mm diameter is often left on the forest floor.
A further problem in the art is the significant time taken for a tree to be ready for harvest. The main trunk and branches of the tree must be of sufficient diameter to allow for the economical production of products such as sawn timber. A shorter production cycle would allow for increases in production capacity for a given area of land as a function of time.
The present Applicant has previously proposed load bearing timber members in international patent application PCT/AU2009/001453 (published as WO/2010/057243). While effective in structural applications, these prior art beams are formed from timbers that are implicated in some of the problems referred to supra in so far as the component timbers are necessarily harvested in a wasteful manner Furthermore, these prior art beams are formed from relatively expensive timbers and for some applications are excessive in weight or moisture content.
It is an aspect of the present invention to provide timber structural beams than can be fabricated with less wastage of woody material and/or from timbers that are faster to harvest and/or more economically and/or at a lighter weight. It is a further aspect to provide an alternative to prior art timber beams.
The discussion of documents, acts, materials, devices, articles and the like is included in this specification solely for the purpose of providing a context for the present invention. It is not suggested or represented that any or all of these matters formed part of the prior art base or were common general knowledge in the field relevant to the present invention as it existed before the priority date of each provisional claim of this application.